Another audit raises La. Medicaid oversight issues

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana health and legal officials have failed to properly manage a fund that pays for investigations and prosecutions of health care providers accused of bilking the state Medicaid program, according to an audit released Monday, the latest of several reports criticizing Medicaid oversight.

The state’s health department and the attorney general’s office didn’t identify and deposit the required money into the Medicaid Fraud Fund, shortchanging the effort to combat fraud, the legislative auditor said in the report .

Auditors said about $3.5 million that should have been used to track and prosecute Medicaid fraud wasn’t deposited during